Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

those with origins in the Middle East—were looked upon daily with more and more suspicion and equal distaste. Bradford was given as an example of this. So was the condition of the housing estates in “the worst of our inner cities.” Mosques were attacked; women in c h a dors or headscarves were harassed; young dark-skinned men were chased down and frisked for weapons or bombs . . . Tsk, tsk, tsk, declared the tabloid piously. What
was
the world coming to?
    Corsico had included every possible detail that might juice up the story and produce follow-ups via the sorts of hush-hush phone calls that had long been every tabloid’s bread and butter in London: the father’s position as a professor of microbiology at University College; the maternal grandparents’ upper-middle-class status as denizens of Dulwich; the maternal aunt’s career as an award-winning designer of furniture; the mother’s late-autumn disappearance with the now-missing child into regions heretofore unknown but now suspected to have been Tuscany all along; the unwillingness of all parties to comment upon anything that had occurred. All of this begged for someone with inside information on any person whose name appeared in the story to ring
The Source
and spill beans of the reputation-ruining kind. This would happen in due course, naturally. It always did.
    Assistant Commissioner Hillier had, it seemed, called Isabelle onto his Wilton carpet for a proper caning, and she was bound and determined to pass the joy on to Barbara. The AC had done his homework in advance as well. So what he’d known when Ardery had entered his office was that the story was true from start to finish, with the possible embellishment of the women in c h a dors. No police from the UK were involved, not even the coppers in north London where the girl’s father apparently lived. Had she, Isabelle, heard from the Camden police at all in this matter? No, of course not. Well, get on it, then. Because the press office wants something to report in the morning and it had better be of the nature of someone’s being assigned to this.
    What Barbara knew was that Isabelle Ardery could not prove that Barbara herself was behind the story. Every person in the department despised Mitchell Corsico from the time he’d been embedded with them during an investigation of serial killings. No one wanted to touch him with a barge pole, which was what made him so useful to Barbara.
    She laid the paper carefully back on Ardery’s desk. She said just as carefully, “Seems to me it was bound to come out, guv.”
    “Oh, is that how you see it?” Ardery was standing at the bank of windows with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, and it came to Barbara how tall she was—more than six feet when she had her shoes on—and how she used her height to intimidate. Her posture was a straight edge and, as she was dressed in a pencil skirt and a fine silk blouse, it was no large problem for Barbara to see the shape she was in. This shape was also meant to intimidate, so Barbara decided not to be intimidated. The woman had, after all, a fatal flaw and he was standing there in the office with them.
    She glanced at Lynley. He was looking sombre. He said, “It’s not a good situation any way you look at it, guv.”
    “It’s not a ‘good situation’ because the sergeant here has made it so.”
    “Guv, how can you possibly say—”
    Barbara’s protest was cut off abruptly when Ardery said, “You’re assigned to it. You’re leaving for Italy tomorrow. You’re given leave to make your preparations.” She wasn’t, however, looking at Barbara when she made the declaration.
    Barbara said, “But I know the family, guv! And the inspector’s already dealing with an investigation. You can’t send him—”
    “Are you questioning me?” Ardery snapped. “Are you actually
presuming
that the result of this”—with gesture at the tabloid—“would be some sort of imprimatur on my part, including a blessing as you skip off to Italy, on some all-expenses-paid jaunt? Do you actually think I’m so easily manipulated, Sergeant?”
    “I’m not saying . . . I’m only—”
    “Barbara.” Lynley’s voice was quiet. It served as both warning and solace, and clearly the superintendent heard this as well because she said, “Do not
dare
to take her side in this matter, Thomas. You know as well as I that she’s behind this story, and the fact that she’s not at this moment filing memos at a nick on